When the water has evaporated, and dust has blown past the shore and through my memories, the dirty little secrets, not so well hidden, will come to be known.
Guilt and shame
As I sat on the shore of her largest island, a little way from the water’s edge, I asked her, “how can you be so calm after being so mistreated?” With a mother’s patience, she replied, “I have nowhere to go, my only fight is by existing for as long as I can. Providing an oasis for the birds that count on me. Surrounding the islands so the buffalo, deer and coyotes have a place to live.” Her voice becomes quiet, “I hear the gunshots as they are hunted for traveling further in search of food. It is not their fault that my shores have retreated. The hunters come often now. Shooting the Coyotes. $100 per pelt I heard. They are protecting the people, they say.”
Read A Disappearing Lake Part 1 here
“I feel so helpless,” I said. “I want to help somehow, yet I know I, too, am part of the problem.
“Mining and extraction are easy targets. After all, they do contribute significantly to the demise of the lake and surrounding region. If they are so toxic, why are they here? Why are they allowed to continue?” she asks.
“Because we need them. I need them.” My eyes stare steadily at my feet.
“The same thing that threatens to harm me is also useful. The same thing I am fighting against provides for me in so many ways. The same thing that I want to run away from, I can never leave completely. I am tied forever. Trapped.
My own consumption drives the markets. I am always supporting the mines. The lithium, magnesium, and titanium that are extracted make up the gadgets I use daily. Every time I get in my car, coming or going, I support them. Every time I talk on the phone, calling to ask a question, calling to remind someone I love them, calling for help, I am supporting them. Every time I travel to see new places and to see loved ones, I support them. Nearly every time I reach for a drink or cook something on my stove, I support them.
Even as I write these lines, the computers I use to record and share them use these extracted minerals. I am as hypocritical and destructive as my shame.”
Through what seems like pursed lips, she says, “I am nearly cut in half. Sacrifice the north end for the south end. What does that even mean? This re-routing of water disrupts the entire ecosystem. We are all connected to each other. Why is that so difficult to grasp? Everyone says they want me to be healthy. Everyone says they’re sorry. While your apology appears to be sincere, it remains hollow. To you, it may seem as if I’m doing nothing, ‘passive’ some may call it, but I am actually doing everything to exist.
“Listen to the lapping of my waves as they tell tales of times that went before. Water, like elephants, remembers everything.”
I am constantly reminded of my own crop of inextinguishable regrets.
The last migration
My memories blow across my mind like the wind blowing across the shallow waters ― pushing them, displacing them to a land far away.
Do the birds feel their breath slipping away?
Do they question the memory of their DNA when the terrain has become unrecognizable?
Do they, too, feel death lurking in the shadows?
When the things we know to be true change into unrecognizable places, how do we find our way?
Do we continue the same route, hoping to find a return to what we once knew?
Or do we take the risk and head off in a new direction?
The canary in the mine shaft.
The lone feather fluttering in the wind.
Maybe all we can do is love what remains as it disappears.
The death of the birds
Hundreds of them litter the shore
No ― thousands
The birds are almost always on their backs
My guess is that they were turned that way for easy access to their cavities
Where others stole what was worth consuming
Along with the contents of their hearts
If the canary in the coal mine is the sign of death to come, what is the death of the whole flock?
When will the last migration be flown?
Will they keep trying against all odds?
Or will they give up and pick their favorite spot to sit and wait for the end?
How long will I sit in the waiting room?… hoping to have my name called?
Of course, they will keep trying
There is too much to lose
My wings are too heavy and broken to fly
I head out walking in search of water
The sun is bearing down
And the wind whips me from all sides
The gusts within
circulate and pulse
My soul is eroding
Yet I continue walking
Even as the salt encrusts my very being.
Siren song
Across the water is a totem of red lights. Flashing as if in warning. They are echoed on the water’s reflection. Faint golden embers flicker as if a campfire on distant shores. Other lights glow too. The flickering mimics the stars, but they are not part of my DNA.
Red lights. 2 2 3, 2 2 1 3, 312 ― I should learn Morse Code.
.– .- .-. -. .. -. –. -.-.–
.– .- .-. -. .. -. –. -.-.– / — –.. — -. . / .–. .- .-. – .. -.-. ..- .-.. .- – . / — .- – – . .-. / — . .-. -.-. ..- .-. -.– / .- .-. … . -. .. -.-. / … . .-.. . -. .. ..- — / .-.. .- -. – …. .- -. ..- — / .-.. .. – …. .. ..- — / –.. .. .-. -.-. — -. .. ..- — / -.-. — .–. .–. . .-. / .–. .. -.-. -.- .-.. . -.. / … . .– .- –. . / ..-. . .- .-. / … .. -.-. -.- -. . … … / .-.. — … … / — ..-. / -… .-. . .- – …. / … — .-. .-. — .– / -.. . .- – ….
Lurking shadows
Your blackness can be seen from afar. The color shifts, taking leave from that of life and enters the realm of death and decay. It looms like a shadow on approach. Yet, it isn’t created by something blocking out the light, it is the thing itself that obscures. Like a black hole bonding with gravity to pull in all that illuminates.
Rust rivers trickle to rills, becoming morbid deltas. Leeching in all directions, as if they too are trying to escape the madness. Shadows from the clouds above become a welcome shield to confuse the onlooker. And yet, there is an undeniable beauty to it all. Like all destruction seen from above, the texture and contrast, organic contained within the geometric, overlayed again with the outline of the clouds, delights the eyes, pointing them in every direction ― a master of eye flow.
A city emerges from this oxidation. Like something out of a fantastical tale, a Middle Earth fallen unto evil. Devoid of flora and fauna, the brown edges become darker. Towers on smokestacks and massive ponds that look like oil, black as night, pie-shaped. It’s the sheer scale that is hard to comprehend from the sky. The white of salt has turned gray like ash. Piles and Piles of ash-like substances, creating landscapes of cultivated debris. Cremated, like the remains of a loved one, only without an urn large enough to hold it. From the palest gray to the darkest black, a spectrum only found in a scorched landscape after a fire has ripped everything to the ground. In the midst of it all, like a strange joke, aqua ponds in pool-like rectangles line up as if to trick the eyes and hearts into believing that it is also connected to the Caribbean waters far off or the suburban creations to the south that provide oasis to the punishing heat of the west.
This place is hidden from the local traveler. Seen from above, it is astonishing, but the distance also feeds the disbelief and wavering of impact. Yet, I taste it when I walk out my front door, on days when the warm air traps us in, leaving filth in my mouth until it settles in my lungs, where it cannot escape.
The magnesium mine is like the secrets I try to keep hidden, even from myself. Dark thoughts, piles of pain. I move them around like the trucks, sorting them in rows but never quite taking them away. Sometimes I wonder if I keep them around to hurl at those who hurt me, yet mostly I want to pretend they don’t exist. Hide those awful memories and hope the wind will come one day and blow them away. For now, I’ll let them sink into the blackness and turn all kinds of gray. Sometimes the darkness starts to spread from deep within, seeping quietly with outstretched tentacles. A melancholic dance, deceptive in approach. How long will it linger this time? And what will it consume? All of me? That is always the fear. I have no name for it. I hear its muffled hum, like a lullaby, pretending to soothe, pretending to be a friend, pretending to answer my call. Yet behind the hum is a hiss that grows louder and louder. I should run as fast as I can, yet I turn towards it.
Spring feels so far off, and I have to watch my step not to slip and fall through the cracks in the floorboards. When the water has evaporated, and dust has blown past the shore and through my memories, the dirty little secrets, not so well hidden, will come to be known.
The Wail of the Lake
Come close and let me whisper in your ear
There are secrets below the surface
If you tilt your head slightly at an angle to the wind, you can hear it howl
Like a whistle at first
Then slowly,
it evolves into a scream
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust” T.S. Eliot warned, and I believe him.
Wendy Wischer
Storrs Mansfield
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